Ward v. American Medical Response Ambulance

Background

Anjali Ward filed a complaint against American Medical Response Ambulance and other defendants. The opinion does not describe the underlying claims in detail.

Screening and Failure to Proceed

Ward applied to proceed without prepaying filing fees. Magistrate Judge Cisneros therefore screened the complaint under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B). The screening found that Ward failed to state a claim against ten individual defendants because she alleged no facts or claims concerning them. The opinion identifies those defendants as Jonathan Downie, Greg Sawyer, Chau Nguyen, Kim Yang, Andrew Rozner, Dave Manzeck, Marco Paez, Jonathan Daniels, Ryan Lipkin, and Mary FitzSimons.

Judge Cisneros ordered Ward to file an amended complaint by January 2, 2024. The court also set a case-management conference and required a status report. Ward filed neither the amended complaint nor the status report. Afterward, Judge Cisneros issued an order requiring Ward to explain why the action should not be dismissed for failure to prosecute and to state whether she intended to proceed without amending the complaint as to the ten individual defendants. Ward did not respond by the March 1, 2024 deadline and did not file anything else on the docket. She also did not object to the report and recommendation by its May 1, 2024 deadline.

Ruling

The district court reviewed the magistrate judge’s dispositive recommendation from the beginning, as required for that type of recommendation when a party may object. Judge Edward M. Chen adopted Judge Cisneros’s report and recommendation in full and ordered the case dismissed in its entirety.

The court dismissed the claims against the ten individual defendants under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B) for failure to state a claim. It dismissed the entire action under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(b) for failure to prosecute. The order disposed of Docket No. 10 and directed the clerk to close the case.